SEO – Page Speed and Core Web Vitals

A slow page makes visitors leave, and Google uses page experience as one of its many ranking signals. Content is still more important, but when two pages are equal, the faster one has an advantage. And, more important, fast pages simply give a better experience.

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are three measurements of the real experience of users on a page.

Metric	What it measures	Good value
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)	Loading: how fast the main content shows	2.5 seconds or less
INP (Interaction to Next Paint)	Responsiveness: how fast the page reacts to clicks, taps and keys	200 milliseconds or less
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)	Visual stability: how much the layout jumps while loading	0.1 or less

INP replaced the older metric FID in March 2024. Google measures these values on real users, and a page is “good” when at least 75% of visits are good for all three.

How to measure

• PageSpeed Insights: enter a URL, and get real user data (when available) and lab test results with suggestions.
• Lighthouse: a tool inside Chrome DevTools to test a page on your own computer.
• Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console: shows groups of URLs which are good or need work.
• web.dev/measure and Chrome DevTools Performance panel for deeper checks.

How to improve LCP (loading)

• Compress images, use modern formats (WebP, AVIF) and the right size. See Images.
• Do not lazy load the main image at the top, and you can give it a high priority:

<img src="hero.webp" alt="Main banner" width="1200" height="600" fetchpriority="high">

• Use a good hosting, caching and a CDN to reduce the server response time.
• Remove or delay things which block the first display, like big CSS and JavaScript files.

How to improve INP (responsiveness)

• Send less JavaScript. Remove the scripts you do not need, and load the others with defer or async.
• Break long tasks in smaller parts, so the browser can answer the user.
• Be careful with heavy third party scripts like chat widgets and many trackers.

How to improve CLS (stability)

• Always give width and height to images and videos.
• Reserve space for ads and embeds.
• Load web fonts in a way that does not move the text a lot: font-display: swap.
• Do not add new content above the content which the user is already reading.

Easy wins for a WordPress site

• Use a light theme and remove the plugins you do not use.
• Use a caching plugin and image optimization.
• Keep PHP, WordPress and plugins updated.

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